Jose Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch discusses violations in Mexico

Americas Now

The case of 43 missing student teachers from southern Mexican last year has ignited international outrage, but what happened to them is still a mystery.

The students went missing from southern Mexico, from Iguala, Mexico in Sept. 2014 after they clashed with police. The town’s mayor Jose Luis Abarca and his wife Maria de los Angeles Pineda have been arrested and charged with crimes related to their disappearance, and links to the Guerreros Unidos cartel.

The students were allegedly killed them, their bodies at a trash dump and their remains thrown into a river, but so far only one of the students has been positively identified by DNA testing on human remains. However family members and others have expressed doubts about the official account of the disappearances and continue to press for information on what happened, urging investigators not to close the case.

More than 90 suspects have been arrested in the disappearances, most of them municipal police officers.

U.S. President Barack Obama recently raised the case of the missing when he met with Mexico’s President Enrique Pena Nieto at the White House.

The missing students have become a symbol of a larger, systemic problem in Mexico, Jose Miguel Vivanco director of the Americas Division at the nonprofit Human Rights Watch said.

CCTV America’s Elaine Reyes interviewed Vivanco about criminal impunity and human rights abuses in Mexico.

Jose Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch discusses violations in Mexico

The case of 43 missing student teachers from southern Mexican last year has ignited international outrage, but what happened to them is still a mystery. CCTV America's Elaine Reyes interviewed Vivanco to criminal impunity and human rights abuses in Mexico.